ABSTRACT
If savage cultures are largely made up of broken fragments of higher things, what can be the use of studying them? What interest can savage peoples have for us
unless they teach us what our forefathers were like? Who but the local antiquary cares whether they marry their aunts or their cousins, what trivial deeds their grotesque gods may have performed? Who cares about their chiefs with pedigrees eight generations long, their Liliputian wars, their empires not fifty miles broad? These things set down in good English with an artist's touch, dwelling only on what is of universal human interest, may fascinate for an hour, but in themselves are they worth the drudgery of scientific research?
